<p> Continued wars and conflicts around the world have forced many people to migrate in search of safety and protection through resettlement programs. These people are considered refugees. Unfortunately, these refugees initially resettle in countries that are not able to provide them with necessary human services. Therefore, the United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees works with other countries who are willing to take and provide permanent resettlement opportunities to these refugees. </p><p> The purpose of this research was to gather and analyze refugees&rsquo; stories of their resettlement experiences in Illinois. I used qualitative methods, with a focus on narrative inquiry. I conducted in-depth interviews with four male refugee participants who had at least seven years of resettlement experiences in the U.S. Two participants were from DRC Congo, Africa, one from Iraq, and one from Vietnam. Based on these interviews, the study&rsquo;s findings were: (a) government and non-governmental agencies provided participants with civic education, language acquisition, and technical training that enabled them to gain access to education and employment opportunities; (b) the lack of English language oral communication and writing skills slowed down agency services acquisition; and (c) negative political rhetoric, migration policies, religious and ethnic discrimination, and prejudice created fear among participants that threatened to overshadow their aspirations to integrate and acculturate. To conclude, I recommend involving former refugees in resettlement programs, especially in acquiring government services, because deeper knowledge based on their experiences would improve resettlement policy and practice.</p><p>

<p> A safe learning environment is the very first measure every school district needs to have in place. An environment that provides students with a sense of security and safety enables students to flourish and be successful. </p><p> This qualitative research study determined the perceptions of rural school safety and violence as seen through the eyes of superintendents, principals, teachers, and students 18 years of age or older. By utilizing the Cobb (2014) study which focused on the areas of relationships, respect for diversity, school participation, emotional safety, physical safety, substance use, physical environment, academic environment, wellness, and the disciplinary environment, the researcher was able to gather information on what supported a safe school. The researcher used the interpretivism framework also defined by Butin (2010) who defined it as &ldquo;reality is intersubjective in that it is socially constructed, such that it can be described and represented through diverse perspectives.&rdquo; This was incorporated through a triangulated approach to research including The Oregon School Safety Survey, Pennsylvania School Safety Report, and focus group interviews; the researcher was able to gather perceptions on just how safe rural schools are in the Appalachia Intermediate Unit 08 in Pennsylvania. </p><p> The researcher was able to show the most common areas that all the focus groups concurred upon were drug use, fighting, and bullying/cyberbullying, and these three areas continually maintained the top three positions across all measures of the triangulation approach utilized by the researcher. However, in relation to positive safety factors, research has shown that student involvement in extra-curricular activities, parent involvement, and teacher relationships were of major importance in mitigating threats within the school system.</p><p>

<p> Educators are always evaluating how students connect to their school, trying to identify strategies and intervention programs that will help students be success and linked to their school. A school&rsquo;s culture and student engagement opportunities provide areas that can be impacted, especially when mentoring is added to the model being implemented. Educators go into the profession with the goal of having an impact on the lives of students. Key to the success of making an impact is the importance of connecting with students, providing student engagement opportunities, and maximizing mentoring with younger peers. </p><p> Peer Leaders Uniting Students program is helping districts address day-to-day issues in a collaborative manner using data. This study evaluated the impact the PLUS Program had from the perception and knowledge of adults (teachers, counselors, administrators, and support staff), assessing school climate, student engagement, and student monitoring. The researcher used quantitative and qualitative measurement instruments. A survey was provided to teachers, counselors, administrators, support staff, and PLUS advisors. The survey was followed by interviews that had questions created using data from the adult participants&rsquo; survey responses. </p><p> This grounded theory approach guided the researcher to conclude that even though the PLUS Program is proving to be effective for students, adults need additional training to use the program data. The researcher created a professional development session to meet this need.</p><p>

<p> Urban public education is currently being remade to reflect corporate values and management structures. Charter CMO&rsquo;s particularly are constructed by policy as the most viable solution for &ldquo;turning around failing schools.&rdquo; To date, there are few, if any, insider accounts from charter management-operated (CMO) schools in the research literature. This project brings critical practitioner inquiry into this under-explored space in order to better understand the ways teachers and staff within one specific CMO-operated charter elementary school resist the dehumanizing forces of whiteness and deficit notions of teaching, learning, students, as well as the communities in which they serve. Using critical organizational theory and collaborative inquiry, as well as a narrative inquiry methodology, this project looks at the experiences of teachers and staff members as they enacted the &ldquo;no excuses&rdquo; philosophy over the course of one school year. First, the no excuses philosophy and management practices of College Prep Elementary School (CPES) will be explored. This includes narratives from staff members as they interpret their experiences being trained in the no excuses philosophy and how their views changed throughout the year. Then, the emotional reactions of the teachers and staff members will be more thoroughly analyzed as important intersections of identity and politics. Next, I explore stories of institutional microaggression and deficit shared by Staff of Color to gain a better understanding of the ways whiteness exists in schools. Finally, the inquiry group theorizes culturally competent school leadership, arriving at three main themes all resonating with the ethic of care: care for students, care for families and community, and care for teachers. In the final chapter, implications for policy and practice are shared, as well as the limitations of this study.</p>

<p> Despite the expressed need for bicultural teachers, research on teacher attrition has demonstrated that a growing number of bicultural educators are leaving the classroom. Bicultural male teachers, in particular, experience high rates of teacher attrition. Schools, unfortunately, are contexts in which Latino male teachers are constantly experiencing dilemmas related specifically to both their gendered and racialized positionality as males of color.</p><p> Grounded in Antonia Darder&rsquo;s critical bicultural framework, this autoethnographic study explored the complex factors that drive Latino male teachers out of the classroom, through an in-depth and grounded examination of a Latino male teacher who left the classroom. The study contributes to the conversation on bicultural teacher attrition, gendered relations, and their relationship to both teacher preparation and the education of bicultural students.</p><p> Furthermore, the study explored how racism, sexism, classism, trauma, and heteronormativity mitigate the experiences of Latino male teachers, and how these manifest themselves through the hidden curriculum, asymmetrical relations of power, gendered essentialism, policing of behavior, the culture of silence, conditions of isolation, and disabling cultural response patterns. The implications of such factors in the life of one Latino male teacher are carefully analyzed and discussed, in an effort to consider their significance in rethinking teacher preparation programs, with respect to the needs of Latino males. Moreover, the study offers an engagement with critical autoethnography as a significant tool of reflection in the educational process and emancipatory process of bicultural teachers.</p>

<p> Our school systems are in place to create positive citizens who can contribute to the greater good and to also create a foundation for a life of learning. Schools were originally formed to help our country become stronger in its infancy by generating a population that had common knowledge, baseline skills, especially in literacy, and the ability to be citizens who could move the country forward and keep leaders honest. The same holds true today. However, research is showing that one out of five high-school students is dropping out of school and not graduating within the traditional four-years of high-school. Why students drop out of high-school, and how that may be prevented, is a topic much discussed and researched. The future of non-graduates is grim and the negative impact to society is costly. </p><p> What are common characteristics of students who drop out from high-school? How might educators better the odds for at-risk students? What can we point to that leads other students to find success? The ninth-grade year is a vital one for the success of students in high-school. The skills students build in the ninth-grade will, in large part, determine how they succeed in the latter parts of high-school and beyond. Research shows that the brain continues to grow well beyond the high-school years and there is no limit to the learning of new skills and knowledge. Non-cognitive characteristics also play a key role in the level of success one achieves. While intelligence can serve as a predictor of success at some level, it is not as strong of a determiner as some non-cognitive characteristics that have been identified. </p><p> In this study, the characteristic of grit was looked at to determine if there was a correlation between grit and academic success in ninth-grade students. A quantitative approach was applied to gathering data from ninth-grade students from a rural school district in Washington State. The theoretical frameworks used as a lens throughout this process were Bandura&rsquo;s Social Cognitive Theory and Dweck&rsquo;s Mindset Theory. The foundational belief of Social Cognitive Theory is that people learn from other people. According to this theory, our beliefs and actions are determined by what we experience with, and witness in, other people. Our choices are shaped by our understanding of how our behaviors lead to a better life through what we have seen in those around us. Dweck&rsquo;s Mindset Theory works to explain what propels people to be successful. The Mindset Theory also focuses on determination, goal setting, and a desire to better oneself while challenging the high-praise society that students live in today. Dweck differentiates between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset in a person. This theory states that in the fixed mindset, things are set and very little can change in a person. In this way of thinking, things are what they are with little hope of change. The opposite way of thinking is having a growth mindset. A growth mindset is the belief that we are constantly growing and bettering ourselves throughout our lives. It is the belief that we can and should learn more and continue to build our skills. Dweck states that our brain is a muscle that can be developed and improved upon over time. These frameworks were chosen because grit is a characteristic that is deeply influenced by our experiences with other people and also influenced by the mindset in which people choose to live. With a growth mindset, we can improve the characteristic of grit over time. While grit may be partially inherent, it is a characteristic that can be taught, learned, and improved upon. Duckworth believes that grit is important in understanding and supporting student success. This study specifically looks at grit and whether the presence of grit may lead to greater academic success in ninth-grade students.</p><p>

<p> When researchers and policy makers look toward teacher issues, the focus is typically on novice teachers who are at considerable risk of leaving the profession prematurely. Without dismissing the importance of these teachers, a crucial population of educators is often overlooked: the experienced teacher. These teachers face many of the same challenges as beginning teachers, and must do so over a long and relatively flat career trajectory. As the state of California looks to recruit a new generation of teachers to meet the demands of a growing population, it would be wise to also look for ways to keep experienced teachers engaged, fresh, and motivated. Research has shown that mentoring and other professional development opportunities can help as a means of giving back to the teaching profession. Thus, policymakers and education leaders have an opportunity to utilize existing teacher training program infrastructure to address multiple challenges with singular programmatic solutions. </p><p> The purpose of this cross-sectional survey study was to examine the impact of mentoring and co-teaching within a specialized induction program on the motivation of experienced teachers who served as mentors to beginning teachers while also gaining a glimpse of their interest in participating in a program of this nature. A conceptual framework blending mentoring program assessment and motivation theories guided the development of a survey instrument designed to measure experienced teacher motivation as it relates to their perceptions of the quality of programmatic elements of the induction program. The sample population included 199 mentor-teachers within a large urban California school district, from whom 56 valid responses were recorded. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)</p>

<p> This dissertation study explores the association between principal leadership behavior and school climate with an end goal of impacting student achievement. Certified staff members in a large suburban Illinois school district were involved in this study. Data were collected through the use of the Leadership Behavior Description Questionnaire Form XII (LBDQ Form XII) and the Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire (elementary OCDQ&ndash;RE, middle OCDQ&ndash;RM, and high school OCDQ&ndash;RS). All of the 10 leadership domains examined in this study showed statistically significant associations with various school climate areas. The leadership behaviors of Consideration, Integration, and Tolerance of Freedom were found to have the strongest correlations consistently across levels.</p><p>

<p> There is an abundance of research concerning diversity issues in American classrooms. However, researchers have not provided enough attention to religious goals of Muslim parents and their experiences with educational institutions. For this qualitative study, the researcher interviewed 15 Muslim parents, eight females and seven males, to explore how participants&rsquo; experiences and expectations influence the way they negotiate their religious needs with schools/preschool in Southern California. The results showed that cooperation and negotiations were key strategies adopted by Muslim parents to maintain relationships with educational organizations. Schools accommodated religious practices when requested and parents negotiated their needs when necessary. Findings also showed that participants connected the school&rsquo;s role with academic learning and that teachers lacked accurate knowledge of Islam. There was a sense of restraint among participants. Participants did not want to share the name of their child&rsquo;s school/preschool or materials shared by the school.</p><p>

<p> <b>Purpose:</b> The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study is to discover the factors which contribute to the positive transformation of a comprehensive public high school&rsquo;s culture as perceived by the school&rsquo;s administrators, teachers, and classified staff. An additional purpose of the study is to determine what similarities and differences exist between the perceptions of administrators, teachers, and classified staff. </p><p> <b>Methodology:</b> The researcher identified comprehensive public high schools within the state of California where measurable growth in positive perceptions of school culture had been achieved within the preceding two to four years. Of this target population, six schools were identified, through which the researcher conducted individual interviews with each principal and focus group discussions with separate groups of six to eight teachers and six to eight classified staff members at each school site. Additionally, the researcher participated in observations at each school site and gathered artifacts to support the data garnered through the interviews and focus group discussions. </p><p> <b>Findings:</b> Participants recognized trust, relationships, and shared values as the fundamental components of a positive school culture. Principals perceived shared leadership and decision making as vital, while teachers and classified staff members responded strongly to the inspiring vision of a passionate school leader. Classified staff members also responded strongly to the importance of communication within the organization. </p><p> <b>Conclusions:</b> Cultural change efforts require time, patience, empathy, and willingness to engage in conflict and honest discourse. Additionally, schools with strong, positive culture create an environment that is student-centered, feels like home/family, and values all stakeholders as equally important. All decisions, goals, and plans are rooted in the shared values of the school community, which are communicated constantly in various ways. </p><p> <b>Recommendations:</b> School leaders hoping to positively shift their cultures must engage all stakeholders in the development of shared values, implement structures that facilitate the building of relationships, celebrate risk-taking and small wins, demonstrate and inspire trust, and develop methods to assess and constantly reassess the aspects of their schools&rsquo; cultures in order to spark a call to action that will resonate with stakeholders.</p><p>